Writing Autobiographies!

Hi all! We have been busy bees in the third grade class that I am doing my student teaching in! 

Two weeks ago it was finally my turn to teach the whole reading unit! SOLO!

It was a little nerve racking, but SO, SO fun! 

Here's what we did.

I found this AMAZING autobiography pack from The Teacher Wife's TPT store and it rocked my world.

We tweaked a few things, but overall it was a fabulous pack that covered pretty much all bases! 

This week we were reading Author: A True Story from their Treasures reading book, so it fit perfectly! 

Of course throughout this week we had state assessments to take, a freak snow storm, and in class speakers, but hey, this is supposed to be like real life teaching, right? Haha. We still managed to squeeze all of our plans in and the kids ROCKED their autobiographies. 

We also learned about Author's Purpose this week as our skill. I was able to use the "Easy as P.I.E." saying to help the kids remember them. 

After a long week I brought in my fancy rocking chair I painted over the summer... remember this post?

This was our "author's chair" for the day and we had a BLAST sharing. Luckily this little one covered her face while reading so I was able to capture the moment and legally put the picture up! I'm so mad at myself for not taking more pictures of their work! 

I finished my unit up by giving the kids writer gift bags filled with Post-It notes, pens, pencils, gel grips, and erasers! 

They really worked SO hard and I was SO proud. They are currently typing them for West Virginia Writes! 

Character Traits

As mentioned in my previous post, last week we worked on character traits in our leveled reading groups. I thought I would share the lesson because the kids seemed to respond really well with it! 

This is a 3rd grade class, but I think it would work well with any grade! 

We have reading groups for 15 minutes Tuesday - Thursday and I see 3 different groups a day. 

Tuesday: 

I introduced each group's book for the week to them.

The books I used were Officer Buckle and Gloria, The Story of Ferdinand, Crysanthemum, and Elmer.

I got a FABULOUS character trait package from Amanda Nickerson. I used her inferring character traits by dialogue on the first day where my students and I read through the book and inferred the main character's character traits by what they said throughout the book. 

Wednesday: 

We went back through the book and used the second chart from Amanda's unit where we inferred character traits through the actions of the main characters. 

Thursday:

I created a vinn diagram sheet for the students to reflect on their own character traits, the traits of the main character, and traits they had in common. 

You can get this worksheet here!

Friday we got together as a whole group and made fall character trait mobiles to hang up in the room. 

We cut out a green circle and hung leaf colored shapes from it with each student's character trait hanging on them. I instructed the students to write "THEIR NAME's Character Traits" on the top of the green circle and we put their picture in the middle. 

They turned out great and once we hung them it made it look like autumn leaves were falling from the ceiling! 

We had so much fun learning about character traits! This week we are tackling author's purpose and writing autobiographies! WOO HOO!